Let’s Get New Dogs To Teach Us New Tricks

Don’t get caught up in old rules

As we grow and experience more of the world, we start to build mental structures or ways of thinking that are hard to change.

Today, young entrepreneurs have grown up in a world where the rate of innovation has rapidly increased. Barriers to entry have dropped significantly, allowing entrepreneurs to start businesses with limited access to capital. Hackers are used to looking at technical solutions to every problem around them. Its part of their DNA. I am not saying that an older entrepreneur cannot adapt or adjust their way of thinking, but I do think its harder.

Companies that decide to hire senior level positions and CEOs externally to help with a company turnaround, are trying to bring someone in with a different mindset. Internal employees know a lot more about their company, how it runs and how it has operated in the past, but its harder for them to step outside the inner workings that they have helped build. Gary Vaynerchuk argues that when you do well by the old rules, you become complacent and refuse to accept a new paradigm shift.

Marissa Mayer joined Yahoo as an external hire and brought about change in the company. She had seen how Google, a more modern and innovative company, was built and therefore could better critique and analyze Yahoo.

I am sure if you could have presidents rotate around different governments they would be able to better question and improve government as they would have a broader perspective. Of course, there are probably regulations that would prevent this from happening but I think it would be an interesting experiment.

Once we accumulate knowledge, we tend to better understand the many risks with each new venture and become skeptical about its feasibility. We tend to think more about implementational challenges and assign higher levels of difficulty to each risk than a less experienced founder would. These may be valid risks but they may be easier to address in todays world than in the world an ‘expert’ grew up in.

I think that while knowledge is extremely valuable sometimes it can hurt us. Too much knowledge about a company, or a specific government may limit our ability to innovate or change that business or government. We may become overconfident because of our ability to execute in the old system and fail to realize that the system has changed.

“Doubt grows with knowledge”

— By Randy Rayess

Twitter: @RandyRayess, Google+, Linkedin.